According to the Ministry of Education, information circulating that from next year applicants will only be able to choose one educational program when registering for the national exams is not true.

“Applicants will not have their freedom of choice restricted. They will be able to list educational programs offered by both state and private universities,” the Ministry’s statement reads.

As a reminder, today at the session of the Parliament’s Economic Policy Committee, Deputy Minister of Education Zviad Gabisonia presented amendments to the draft law on Higher Education, which Parliament is reviewing under an accelerated procedure.

Answering questions, Gabisonia said that under the current model, when a student marks their preferred faculties, they have options to mark several universities. As a result, if their scores are not enough for the first university, they may get into the second, third, or fourth. “In reality, this lowers quality,” he said.

“Under the new model, this will not be possible. The main goal will be to ensure that only highly qualified students with high scores are admitted, because it is fundamental for us to raise quality in this direction.

We expect that in a short period - shorter than it usually takes to define a model for the education system - we will see immediate results, because only highly qualified applicants will be admitted,” Gabisonia stated.

Earlier, Gabisonia spoke in detail about the changes.

“You know that the Government of Georgia has announced a fundamental reform of higher education. This is the first package. The concept aims to address seven challenges and is divided into packages depending on the timeline needed for various changes.

The first package includes amendments to several laws: the Law on Higher Education, the Law on the Development of Education Quality, amendments to the Defense Code, the law on establishing a Legal Entity of Public Law - Kutaisi International University - and amendments to the Law of Georgia on International Protection.

At the first reading, we will explain the directions of the changes. First, a completely new funding model for the educational system will be introduced. According to the new decision, the existing grant system will be abolished and replaced entirely by a state-funded model, meaning direct 100% state budget funding for state universities. The existing 100%, 70%, 50%, and 30% grant system will be cancelled. Grant-based funding will also be abolished for private universities. Under the current model, grants followed the student to the university where they gained admission. The first change concerns this component.

The second component concerns the fact that students enrolled up to and including 2025 will retain the existing system - meaning the grant model. Therefore, today’s first-year students will not be affected in terms of funding.

A very important change concerns the transformation of the study structure. Under the previous model, the bachelor’s program lasted 4 years, and the master’s program lasted 2 years. The new model will be 3+1+1. This means the bachelor’s degree in non-regulated professions will last 3 years, and the master’s program will follow a 1+1 model. The existing 2-year master’s model will be replaced. After completing the first year of the master’s program, a student will be eligible for a master’s diploma. If they decide to continue into the third stage of higher education - the PhD - they will be able to add credits during the additional one-year component. This will align us fully with the Bologna Process. They will accumulate 300 credits, which serves as the basis for continuing to the doctoral level. This is what the amendment concerns.

Another very important change is that, according to the Ministry’s proposal, the government will define the number of educational programs universities may offer. Under the proposed model, approved by the government, the concept of “one city – one faculty” applies. This means that programs should not be duplicated among state universities in the same city. The same program cannot be offered by multiple state universities in one city. The amendment also concerns student quotas. Based on market principles and in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, the required quotas for different professions will be defined. The government will announce quotas for state universities, determining how many students each program may admit. Simply put, if previously students could get into different universities due to multiple choices, now each state university will offer only one specific faculty, and competition will increase.

We expect the quality to improve significantly in a very short period.

The last component is more technical. As you know, one of the recent legislative changes concerned establishing normative acts for the concept of an online university. Regarding these standards, we request the deadline for developing online university standards be postponed to January 1, 2028, because additional technological support is needed. Therefore, with this amendment, we want to postpone the deadline until 2028,” Gabisonia stated.